Jibber Jabber, Chit Chat, Yakkity Yak

The first thing you notice about Southerners is how much they talk. Non-stop, pretty much. Women talk more than men, of course, but Southern men talk as much or more than Northern women, and that takes some getting used to.

The second thing you notice is that they don’t talk about anything. Let me put that a different way: they mainly talk about Nothing. Trivia. If a Southern man tied his shoes that morning, it’s good for a 15-min spiel repeated endlessly (it seems) during the day. He will tell you what kind of shoelaces he has and explain in great detail their specific properties (greasy, tabbed, striped or plain, slick, whether or not they have a tendency to knot up), tell a long story about a cat he had once that kept untying them as soon as he got them knotted, and treat you to a blow-by-blow description of every neat finger-twist and loop involved in his successful effort to keep his shoes from falling off. Finally finished, he will then shake his head (or smile or sigh or grunt, whichever seems appropriate) and having taken his little break, tell it all over again, and in virtually the same words.

Women are pretty much the same except that their recitation will last 3-4 times as long and include details about every pair of shoes, sneakers or boots they’ve ever had to tie since the day they learned how, how much each pair cost, what color they were and how well they went (or didn’t) with their outfits. Having gotten up a head of steam with this preliminary exercise, they will proceed then to the main event: an account of every family member (down to and including 2nd and 3rd cousins and great-great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles, etc), friend, acquaintance, friend of a friend, acquaintance of an acquaintance, or total stranger (second or even third hand rumors included) about whose shoes or tying thereof she has ever heard, suspected, or guessed. The other difference is that, having once filled up your afternoon with these enervating tales, she does not then repeat them. She ends and moves on to new victims. This is a blessing one learns to appreciate.

The third thing you notice and that it is entirely unnecessary that they know you before they subject you to these lengthy and convoluted explications of deeply private family life. I have been a total stranger to many folk who plunked them,selves down next to me on a park bench and treated me to intimate tellings of their family secrets and day-to-day affairs as if I were a long-lost brother and they were catching me up on the doings of past years by a sister’s cousin’s nephew or a second cousin’s wife’s niece. I am told that this sort of thing is a sign of “Southern charm”, neighborliness, and/or hospitality, a way of making strangers feel as though they are “part of the family, but since these Bible-length epigraphs are never accompanied by an invitation to dinner or a night in the guest room, I have my doubts.

The fourth thing you notice (this may actually be higher on most lists) is the utter banality of these verbal novels. They would be far easier to take if they contained a pinch of wit, a dash of drama, a soupcon of poetry or style. But they don’t. They are relentlessly flat, stale, as mediocre and soporific as a list of the chemical ingredients in plaster of Paris. Again, if they were tales of important events in the life of the teller or significant influences on their decision-making, one could appreciate them as genuine attempts, however flawed, to communicate the reality and struggles of their self to another human heart. But they aren’t. They are ruthlessly mundane, long impassioned descriptions of daily activities common to everyone. I was once gripped by a vice-like, clawed hand and for 20 minutes told every second of a woman’s trip to the store for a quart of milk during which nothing whatever happened except that she survived the experience and, in an excess of relief at her escape, bought a half-gallon instead.

Which brings bus to our fifth realization: as hopelessly trivial and ordinary their lives are judging from these excepts, these minor incidents are considered by their owners important enough that they are convinced everyone else will be happy to stop whatever they are doing to hear them. The usual, admittedly polite, way a Southerner approaches the issue is to begin with, “I don’t mean to interrupt you…” and then without taking a breath go on to interrupt you for the next hour or so. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you could be reading a book, watching a movie, or trying to write a symphony, whatever it is, their attitude says, it’s just a way of filling time until they could come along with the really crucial business of your day – listening to their life story, or whatever part of it they are pleased to part with. Nothing you may be doing could possibly be as important as that.

For all the simplicity and even innocence of the stories themselves, there is a darker side to this one cannot ignore that includes an overweening pride, a superficial interest in other people that hides a deep disinterest in anyone other than themselves, and an unhealthy reliance on obsession with irrelevancies as a replacement for having to deal with uncomfortable truths about themselves or their society.

Northerners are far from perfect but at least you aren’t likely to be waylaid on the street by a complete stranger and lose half your day while they tell you a story about how they picked up their dry cleaning yesterday. And that’s a blessing.